its my fortay

Generation Z at the Forefront of the Gun Control Debate

The Associated Press reports that the March for Our Lives protest for gun law reform is set to take place in Washington, DC on March 24. AP says that so far, the rally will gain one million dollars in donations between actor George Clooney and mogul Oprah Winfrey.

In the wake of the Stoneman Douglas shooting on February 14th killing 17, students have gathered at the nation’s capital making their voices heard in demand for safer school environments. The movement was created by students across the US who “will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that have become all too familiar,” as said in their mission statement of their website www.marchforourlives.com.

This protest is also motivated by the effects of this issue nationwide. In addition to the numerous school shootings that have occurred, death rates due to gun violence on a whole make up about 60 percent of the homicide rate in the United States according to the 2016 article by the BBC, Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence.

The article also notes that just three years ago there have been 60 plus school shootings and 372 mass shootings and as of late the numbers are rapidly increasing.

Though the March for Our Lives group argues that this is a school safety issue over a political issue, gun laws are a popular topic in politics that fuels partisan debates, especially after these incidents, occur. One side of the debate takes the position that guns alone are not responsible for the acts of violence but rather the people that use them. The other side of the argument says that essentially any persons looking to purchase a gun should go through more of an extensive background check.

In two Google Trends maps, one graph the number of states that have searched google for “gun control” versus “gun shops” over the past year and the other shows the same graph after the Stoneman Douglas shooting. It reveals that after the shooting the majority of states were searching gun control over gun shops, a completely opposite result of prior shootings where most people would be more inclined to purchase guns.